Interactive elements on hidden layers still active

Dec 29, 2015

So I've encountered an interesting problem that I'm curious to see if anyone else has experienced it. I am developing educational interactive modules with quiz-like elements (without scoring). I'll typically use layers to pop up feedback responses based upon individuals answers. On several of these I'll give the option to continue and try again, usually set up as boxes with triggers. What I've discovered is after a user has accessed a slide layer and hits try again (which hides that later), the boxes are not visible but are still clickable.

This issue does not appear in the preview function in Storyline or in regular HTML. Rather, it only appears when utilizing HTML5 output in Google Chrome. It doesn't appear with regular HTML output, but unfortunately other components of my presentations require HTML5. Since discovering this problem, I've gone back to prior projects and the problem definitely exists. I just never noticed because the prior boxes were always in locations that would not result in "random clicks".

I created a project with a sample slide that suffers from this problem. On this question slide after incorrectly answering the question and hitting "Try Again" the "Give Up" box located in the lower right hand corner becomes clickable despite being invisible. Once again this only seems to work with HTML5 output in Chrome (at least on my PC).

Interactive_element_problem.story

6 Replies

Christie Pollick

over 8 years ago12/30/15 at 3:18 pm (UTC)

Hi, Nathan -- So sorry to hear of your difficulties! Thanks so much for providing your file and details on the behavior you are experiencing, and I will publish/test your file as soon as possible to see if I encounter the same behavior. Thanks so much for your patience, and I will be in touch! :)

Christie Pollick

over 8 years ago12/30/15 at 3:45 pm (UTC)

Hi, Nathan -- thanks so much for you patience while I tested your file. As I am not certain where the issue is taking place, I would like to recommend that you use this form to submit a case with our Support Engineers so that they are able to further investigate the root of the issue you are experiencing. I plan to follow along with their progress and will share updates here in the thread for others who may be experiencing a similar issue.

Nathan Beins
Author

over 8 years ago12/30/15 at 9:39 pm (UTC)

So, just an update for anyone that may have similar issues. The support engineers confirmed the problem and are forwarding it for further examination by the Quality Assurance team. In the meantime they found that manually creating a trigger to set the troublesome object to "hidden" at the same time as the slide layer is set to hidden fixes the problem. This also means that you need another trigger to set the object to normal upon starting the timeline for each layer that needs that object. I tested this fix with my own project and while slightly tedious to set up it does correct the problem. Hopefully that will help some other people that may be having the same issue.

Christie Pollick

over 8 years ago12/30/15 at 9:43 pm (UTC)

Many thanks for sharing the update on your case -- you beat me to it! I had already gone ahead and shared the update over here in a similar thread (and linked that post to your thread) but I hadn't yet provided the update here, so your help is greatly appreciated! :)